No Filler Music Podcast - Emo Pop Perfected: Hot Rod Circuit's Sorry About Tomorrow

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

By the time 2002 came around, "emo" had gone mainstream. Bands like Jimmy Eat World and Dashboard Confessional had made it to MTV, and paved the way for emo pop's continued success throughout the decade. Having just signed to emo kingmakers Vagrant records, Hot Rod Circuit's 2002 release Sorry About Tomorrow is the perfect representation of what defined that sound. And for the hosts of No Filler, this album represents a defining summer in our youth. On this episode we chat about music's ability to instantly transport you back to a certain time and a certain feeling, and how that emo pop sound of the early aughts has that ability for us in a big way. Tracklist Hot Rod Circuit - At Nature's Mercy Hot Rod Circuit - Weak Warm Hot Rod Circuit - You Kill Me Hot Rod Circuit - Radiation Suit Hot Rod Circuit - Safely Hot Rod Circuit - Cool For One Night TOPS - Direct Sunlight Paul & Linda McCartney - Monkberry Moon Delight Stiff Little Fingers - Alternative Ulster This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Bundled for more value. Shop before they're gone. In store online at Sephora.com. And welcome to No Filler, the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Travis. Got my brother Quentin here. And we're about to make our next stop on the school bus route through our developmental years, cue, of music listening. picking up all our favorite bands along the way.

We're talking 2001, 2001, 2002. The early odds, by this point, 2002, we still didn't have our license yet. You know, so we're freshmen in high school, trying to figure out who we were. And this is the music we were listening to, Q. Last week, we talked about Boxcar Racer. That was our sidetrack episode for Blink 182. So punk, right? Pop punk.

So we thought a nice transition out of that would be to talk about some punk emo or, you know, I put it in the same bean almost as like pop punk, but this has got an emo flair to it. And definitely not as cheery. No. You know, like with the power cord and stuff. Maybe that's why it gets the email label, right? because while Blink is singing about, you know, just having a good old time, this band in particular, as well as other bands in the emo umbrella,

going to sing about some stuff that's going to, you know. You know what, the funny thing about this band, though, they're not singing about anything too depressing either. Let's get real here. But today we are talking about Hot Rod Circuit, a little band from Alabama. I have no idea how I may have stumbled upon this record. I don't know if it was something I picked up at that little CD shop that we went to.

CD addict. Shout out to CD addict. It's nothing. Rest in peace. It was, I mean, here's the thing, the owner of the shop, not that anybody gives a shit. But if you live in Denton, Texas, or if you've ever been, you may be familiar with a record store called Mad World Records. to offer the square and the square is

if you're from Denton or if you've ever been there that's where all the stuff is that's where all the fun stuff happens that's where all the music happens the bars right what was the name of the guy

that owned that place Mark? His name is Mark yeah Mark used to run a CD store in Carrollton, Texas of all places where you and I grew up

that was our stop man that was our place to get records to get CDs yeah we became I mean somewhat close to the guy as far as like customers go. Yeah, I mean, we were just the kids who were just coming in there looking for shit like this, right?

Yeah, he would help, he helped us find a lot of good bands. I remember he would always point us in the right direction. Yeah, definitely. I remember he had like a button maker and we bought a ton of buttons from him, like band buttons and slapped him on our backpacks. Yep. Yeah, we put it on the, like the liner of the ceiling in our first car. We just lined it with band, rock band buttons like the strokes and whatnot.

Dude, we destroyed that car. Anyway, that store is dead, but it lives on in Denton in a much better, much better location, much better shop. I've been there a couple times. It's pretty sweet set up, dude. Cool. Anyway, so yeah, these guys, honestly, there's not much to tell about them, really. I don't think they got much attention. I mean, they were on a pretty well-known emo record label called Vagrant Records,

or at least that's where they ended up for this record. We're talking about a record today called Sorry About Tomorrow. It came out in 2002. It was their third studio record. And, yeah, this was their first record that they put out, I'm sorry, I'm off on this. It's their fourth record, my bad. But this is their first record under Vagrant Records.

And this is what I'm talking about. It's so obscure that it doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page. And not to say that that is like, you know, the end-all-be-all of success is having a, you know, a separate Wikipedia page. If a random person created a page for you on Wikipedia. Yeah. But it does say that they are not. well known and popular enough to have that kind of attention devoted to their Wikipedia page, right? But vagrant records, if I could name off of just a few, if you remember and we're

plugged into the, the emo scene, chances are you are familiar with this record label. And we're talking about Q. Here we go. You ready? Ready. Alkaline trio. Oh, yeah. A cursive memory. Nope. You never heard of them? I'm. neither. Censes fail. That rings a bell. Here's the big one though, thrice. Everybody remembers, oh yeah. Everybody remembers thrice. Oh man, I haven't thought about that band in a while. Another band, which is going to be our side track next week, Hey Mercedes. Yes. But, you know, Vaguer Records are still around and they have still currently signed bands like Mayor Hawthorne, French kicks, which I love. That's not Remo. Bombay Bicycle Club, dude.

We were set to go see them this year, man, and it got canceled. Damn. But, no, so they've, they've expanded their roster to, to a wide range of artists nowadays, because you got bands like School of Seven Bells on their rogue wave. Albert Heyman Jr. Hey, no. Of the strokes is on vagrant record. So there you go.

Anyway, um. You say Heyman Jr? Yeah, that's his name. Heyman. I thought it was Hammond. Albert Hamon Jr. Tomato, tomato, tomato, Q. Well, I just wanted to say, we're not going to jump into the history of emo or punk on this episode.

This one's going to be pretty short. But I want to refer you back to our episode on Jimmy E. World, which was episode 11. And we dive a little bit deeper into that genre of music. We play several different bands to kind of show the progression of the sound. So anyways, let's jump back to episode 11. If you're interested a little bit more of the history of, emo. But yeah, we're not going to really spend that much time doing that today. So here's an interesting fact, Q. If in, in 2002, if you ever caught a concert and went and saw

Newfound Glory, Dashboard Confessional, saves the day, good Charlotte, less than Jake, etc., etc., you may have seen Hot Rod Circuit open for them. I mean, there's a big chance that someone who's listening to this saw one of those pants during that time. Those bands are the big time, you know. Could Charlotte especially, man. Right, right. Not to say that they're good or anything. No, yeah.

I was never a fan of good Charlotte, but they were huge. But interestingly enough, before this record came out, they did tour with Jimmy World. As well as Reggie and the Full Effect, which is another band that some of them. you might be familiar with. I never really gave them a chance. But anyway, so yeah, these guys formed in 1997. They were originally known as Antidote. And they did release an album under that name called Mr. Glenbosky, which won the group, the best unsigned band of 1998 award by musician magazine. So yeah, they were getting some buzz. And here's what I want to do, dude. Let's just play.

Let's play one track from their early years here, because I wanted to talk about something. I wanted to hone in on the sound change that happened between the 90s, the late 90s, in this case, and then the bulk of the music that we play today. Because I think it speaks volumes on how quickly the emo sound changed from the late 90s into the early 2000. So just, you know, a few years, really.

So let's play a track off of their 99 record called If I Knew Now, what I knew then. And so, yeah, let's just do the first track. It's called Week Worn. Week warm. Yeah, the M looks like an N. Okay. All right, let's play it. All right.

So pretty standard. I would say that's more. That's closer to punk. Like hardcore. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But the voice, especially, he, and this is kind of like Jimmy World, the voice, like, it's almost like he hadn't found his voice yet.

Or the, you know, he just was changing with the times and the sound. Because when you hear some of the music we're going to play off of the record, sorry about tomorrow, it's going to sound like a different singer. It's the same guy. But it sounds more like all the popular emo bands that were coming out in the early 2000s. Because that's when, you know, by the time Jimmy Whirl put out Bleed American, which was a year before, sorry about tomorrow comes out, because Bleed American came out in 2001.

But anyway, that was what's interesting to me because I went back and it was like, hey, let me listen to what their early stuff sounded like. And I was like, man, this is not even the same band. It sounds so different. And that's because that's because of the scene, man. The emo wave three was just around the corner, you know. Third wave emo, as it were. So anyway, Q.

Well, do you mind if I play a little bit off of the album in between. Sorry about tomorrow and... Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Let's just take a trip, dude. We're on the bus. We're on the school bus. Let's just keep going. Yeah, so you reached out to me and like, hey, man, you should listen to some of Hot Rod's older stuff.

and I did the same and it does kind of you can see their progression. Progression, yeah. And it does kind of seem like he's slowly starting to find his style

vocally and musically. So here's a song off of an album of theirs called If It's Cool with You, it's cool with me. This album came out in 2000. This song is called You Kill Me.

I like that song a lot, dude. Yeah, it's a little bit more polished. I would say than the last one. But it still has that kind of like that, and this is probably just reflective of the label and the studio that the ad access to, but it still has that like raw,

more raw like amateur sound, you know. Yeah. I do appreciate the harmonizing with these guys. Yeah. I like, especially in this one, like it's, there's harmonizing almost the entire time. It's, you know, it's cool. I like it a lot.

And yeah, dude, we didn't, jump back and listen to their older stuff back then, probably because it was, you know, not, it wasn't a Spotify, it wasn't easily accessible to just listen to whatever album you want at all times. But yeah, like you were saying, I don't know either where or how we came across Hot Route Circuit. I honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if this was a band that Mark pointed us over to at Seedy Addict.

That's possible. Curious to know what he would like. would have prompted him to recommend this to us, you know? Maybe it could have been, hey, if you like Jimmy World. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing. This could have just been, I mean, let's be honest, you, we were, what, 15? Maybe I just liked the model on the front.

Oh, yeah. You know, she looks like she's depressed there. Yeah, well, yeah, just a hair. But it looks like she, you know, could use a friend or something. So maybe I was just like, man, let me just dive into this here. Anyway Well, let's say this too, man Of all the albums that we're revisiting

For this back to school segment For whatever reason, this album Hits me in the Feels the most, dude Well, this is what I wanted to talk about Yeah, dude, this is what I wanted to talk about specifically Because I'm the same way And I think it's just because of It must have been the summer that we got our hands on this record

I remember specifically And this is not going to mean anything to anybody listening. But this was one of the summers that we spent in in Plano, Texas, which is where I live right now. But with our dads, you know, we stayed at our dad's house for a summer.

And I remember this record was something that I would listen to. And like that was just a very innocent time, man. Before we had our car, so we would walk to the McDonald's down the street. Yeah, I remember that. to get some ice cream and shit, get a, get a Big Mac to go. So, yeah, it's just something about... So you remember listening to this album before we had our driver's license?

Yes, and obviously we continued to listen to it. So you have a tie, like in your head, this is tied to... This is tied to getting the driver's license and having that freedom that you feel when you get a driver's license. Yeah. And, you know, all you have is a curfew that you need to be home by a certain time. but other than that, you're free to go hang on at the mall or whatever the hell we used to do. Right. And yeah, I specifically remember listening to this album cranked up because I was just a little punk that played my music way too fucking loud in my car.

Windows down, you know, and I can just remember, I can just see, you know, the dashboard and the steering wheel of our old crappy Chevrolet tracker. I think it was a 99 Chevy tracker. Yeah. So yeah, dude, yeah, very, very strong memories tied to this album. And like you said, really good memories. Good memories. Yeah. And that's what I want to talk about.

So let's play the song here, Q, our first track here. And this was the one that got you in the fields, right? Big time. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So this song is track three. It's called Radiation Suit. There you go, Q.

The summer of 2002, it's back. good song good song catchy as fuck catchy as fuck so yeah um what is it about music dude that just it has the power to instantly take you back to like a feeling and like a time you know what i mean yeah i don't know how it works man yeah and i think obviously like you know the band that you know if it's a record that you listen to a ton and then didn't listen to do and then revisit it, that's when it can become a super like time machine. You know what I mean? Because just like with, I feel like it's the same way with food.

Like I can eat or smell something and be taken back. Me too. To a very specific place. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it can be pretty random too. Yeah. Like for the longest time, anytime I smelled sauteed mushrooms, it reminded me of Las Vegas.

Yeah, that's weird Don't know why But yeah And you know what dude This is random But our older brother Spencer Just found in a random box in his house This freaking

This old like block Like playing set Where like each side of the block Would have like a different Like piece of a face And you could piece it together And make all these different faces with it Yeah

And dude when he sent me that picture, I want to talk about a fucking nostalgia trip because like that that's something that I completely forgot existed. And our dad chimed in and said, yeah, that was a toy of mine from my preschool days. Yeah. So if you're somebody in your in your 60s, you may remember changeable Charlie. Yeah. That's the name of the product.

Like you said, it's a bunch of wooden blocks with pieces of a person's face on each sock. and you would just rotate the blocks and make different faces. But yeah, dude, like when I'm looking at the picture right now, it's insane. When I look at it, how, oh yeah, I remember that vividly, you know what I mean? So not just music, but yeah, like the whole thing is, it is crazy how much, like how many memories can be stored in a toy or an album. Yeah, like a melody. Yeah. Yeah, it's insane.

So, yeah, to the point of like, it can have a powerful impact on you. Like, if you hear it, and it almost knocks you out of your, like off your feet almost. Well, like I had said to you, I think it was last week when I was revisiting this album again. Dude, I got almost choked up listening to radiation suit again. Right. I was just flooded with memories of my teenage years. Yeah, exactly. Yes.

And it takes you back to that more innocent time. You want to know what song did it to me once big time to the fact where I had to stop listening. Not stop listening. I had to stop what I was doing to keep listening and like just bask in the in the memories and the emotion. What? It was one, two, three by Gloria Estefan. Really? Yeah, because.

Dude. Probably the last. You should do an album on Gloria Estefan. Yeah, you're right. And get my dad. We need to get our dad on here and have him explain themselves. Yes. They explain themselves because.

Why are you so into Gloria Estefan, dad? But explain himself in the sense that, like, knowing who he is, where and how did he stumble upon Gloria Estefan? Because when I listen to it now, it's like, it's great. This is fantastic. Yeah. But how did he get to Gloria Estefan and why? Like he said, why? Well, he was a big fan of shot A, too.

But, I mean, totally completely different, you know, kinds of music. Right. But what made him decide, hey, you know what? I'm going to listen to Gloria Esophon, and I'm going to tape a live concert of her. Because remember that? We had that on VHS. Anyway, for some reason, and this is goofy. But when I heard that song, I don't know, it was probably five, six years ago when I listened to that record, I was at work.

And I was reminded for some reason of sitting on the coffee table in the din where we had a TV and playing Sonic the Hedgehog. Oh, shit. But for some reason, this song made me think of that. Because I think I tie it to that den. Yeah, me too. I don't know, dude. Anyway, that's a tangent and a half right there. But no, that's the whole point of this batch of episodes here is to just bask in nostalgia for a few weeks.

Yeah, and I know that, you know, unless you're our older brother Spencer, and if you're listening, I miss you, bud. He doesn't listen anymore. Oh. I know these memories don't mean anything to other people, but hopefully. Hopefully, you know, you can kind of, you can definitely relate and you can connect with what we're saying. Yeah. And if you've, if you've, if you've, if you've ever listened to Gloria Estefan or if you've ever played Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis, then yeah, you know what we're talking about. Um, you just don't know, uh, anything about Carrollton, Texas, probably.

Or our den. Or what our den looks like. Unless you're, unless Mitchell's still listening. Hey, Mitch. What's up, Mitch? What's up, Mitch? The original listener. All right, Hugh. Let's keep going here.

All right. We got two more tracks to play. And in the way that that radiation suit hits you and the nostalgia feels, cue, this song always gets me, man. I love this song. And here's what I wanted to point out. Well, first of all, like we said earlier, notice how much more polished that song is and their sound is on this record

compared to the first two tracks we played, right? It's a little more tame. Yes. It's more popular. Yeah, there's not as much yelling, I guess, if yelling's the right word, that style of singing. Right. Yeah. So here's the thing.

You know, this is when they get to Vagrant Records, and this is what they sound like, right? So I'm reading a review here. This website is called Hybrid Magazine.com. And they're saying here about radiation suit, the song perfectly showcases the talent-drenched hot rod circuit product that Vagrant is sure to. to turn into gold. So basically, this is what Vagrant Records did. Like this is, they took bands with talent and then, you know, sent them through the Vagrant record machine and then outcomes like this really highly produced punk demo sound, you know what

I mean? So the sound engineer, you know, producer probably, you know, had some opinions and suggested they, they maybe, you know, maybe do this song a little bit differently or, you know, let's try this formula. Yeah, and this is what you get. Exactly. All right, let's move along here. Next track is called Safely, and I wanted to point out before we hit play, what I've always loved about this track is actually the guitar. It is very melodic the entire time, and I think the guitar player, his name, if you're wondering, is Casey Prestwood. He is perfectly aligned with the vocal melody this whole time, right? And you'll kind of notice that. And then there's this really awesome

like kind of guitar solo type thing that happens in the middle. So anyway, let's listen to it. The track is called Safely. Great song, man. Yeah. And the harmonizing great, right? And like you said earlier, that's something that they do a really great job on. I don't know if you were paying attention to the guitar line in Q. I was because you mentioned it. Really awesome, man. I love. love that because he's got this little thing that he's doing with the guitar kind of like a lot of pull-ons and pull-offs and hammer-ons and stuff like that what was that um don't usually throw a guitar lingo in there um yeah but uh it's really well done and um i said that there was a guitar solo i think there is if you want to if you want to keep playing because there's like it's halfway through the

song we don't have to hear the whole thing but why don't you uh keep me honest here cue and keep the track playing so we can hear that solo all right well before we do that let's take a quick break break. And we're back. All right, dude, let's see if we can find that guitar solo. Sorry, man. I don't think we got a guitar solo in this one, dude. Well, oops. Well, here's a thing, though. Because that guitar is so melodic the whole time, it doesn't need a solo. How about that? Okay, good. Yep, that's good. And I feel like guitar solos in rock music kind of died out around. Like this was, it was still very much a thing in the early 2000s.

You don't hear that very often anymore. I'm thinking of like Jimmy E. World, Weezer had a bunch of guitar solos in their music. Yeah. Even the strokes, dude. And, uh, Kings of Leon, you know, at least back then, they had guitar solo. There was a guitar solo in radiation suit. Yeah. Yeah.

The track we played last. Yeah, I like that too. So yeah. That's the thing. You know, we, we grew up in the last, I feel like the last decade of, guitar-driven rock that made it to the mainstream, you know. Yeah, and we're even... Like Jimmy.

Like, even talking about punk rock, too. Right. Which is, you know, replacing more structured guitar stuff with power chords. They still threw in some guitar solos here and there. Yeah. And by this time, Jimmy World was all over MTV with the video for the middle. Everybody remembers that video. Yeah.

I love that song. And there was a great guitar solo in that song, man. Yeah. Anyway, so I wanted to talk about the lyrics real quick, you especially, if anything, just the opening line. This imagery always stood out to me. Same, dude. I love this line. Smoke it down until you smell the flesh burning from your fingertips.

Now, I don't know about you, but that makes me think immediately of that scene in aliens where Ripley is just sitting in this room like traumatized after the events of the first alien. Lee Lee and she's got this cigarette in her fingers that desperately needs to be ashted you know it's got this long-ass trail yeah she's she's definitely about to smell of the flesh burning from her fingertips skew yeah that's a great line I've always I've always always remembered that line so I googled because I wanted to see that picture the the picture of the cigarette that must have been a thing that James Cameron did because Sarah Connor is also seen in T2. So something about him in sequels and his female heroines.

Of course, he didn't redirect the first alien, but Sarah Connor is also smoking a cigarette, and it's even closer to her fingers, cue, the ash. But yeah, the lyrics are interesting. I feel like it's almost like the perspective of the person writing the song, I guess the singer, is giving advice to somebody, it sounds like maybe, like keep your head up and follow through.

I like that line too. Good things will come to you. Hope you get there safely. Like hope you get on the other side of this depression or whatever. Right. Because like, you know, you'll get there. Just, you know, keep your head down. Keep your head up.

I like it. I really like it. Yeah. Good stuff. So anyway, Q, this last track that we're playing is interesting because it sounds to me like he is also reminiscing about. his early years in this song and talking about the town that he grew up in. So, yeah, anyway, here we go. We're going to wrap it up here with one last track from this record.

It's called Cool for One Night. All right, Q, what do you think? That's another song of theirs that I loved, dude, that I always remember. Yeah. Good lyrics, dude. I like his style. His style of- Yeah, his lyrics are really cool.

Yeah, really cool. The way that he... I've always appreciated singers when you read the lyrics back and you're like, man, he kind of broke that sentence up in an interesting way, you know? That is one of our favorite things about Spoon and the way where Daniel writes, yeah. Right. The line that stood out that I really liked, I've lived my life with no regrets regardless of circumstance or chance I'd have to take. Yeah. It's a good line.

Yeah. How many times has the word regardless been used successfully in the song? But he manages to do it. It sounds like he's looking back on this town he grew up in. He's saying this town was cool for one night, early July. Childhood friends have all grown up. And I don't think that I can even remember one time that this place felt quite like home. So one night, dude, he had a great fucking night in the summer.

And it's never felt quite like home like what it did then. To me, that makes me think that whoever he's writing about, whether it be himself or someone else, didn't have a good childhood. Yeah. Because if you, you know, if you lived in a broken home, quote unquote, you know, or shitty parents or whatever your circumstances may be, I wouldn't think of that as home. If I look back on my childhood and realized how shitty it was, I don't know. That's just me thinking out loud here. Yeah. Well, he's saying that it was cool for one night this time.

Right. So anyway. I mean, maybe it was just a really, like maybe the temperature, you know, it was a nice cool breeze. Maybe it was, yeah, maybe a cold, a cold front came in in early July. Yep. Yeah, that's probably what it's about. All right.

Anyway, Q, that's it. So I'm going to read, I'm going to read a pretty good summary of the record. Again, I'm going to quote Hybrid Magazine here. He says here, overall, one could make the case that sorry about tomorrow is the definitive record to summarize the current pop-punk emo scene. There's the new wave nostalgia, the intuitive but effective harmonies, the angular guitar lines, the hummable melodies, and the angst. All wrapped up with masterful songwriting and impeccable musicianship. a pretty damn good summary of the record, right? Yep, totally. And I think he's right that

like this record is the perfect you know, encapsulation of that sound. Yeah. And like in 2002, like we were at the peak of that. And you know, I've always wondered what did, I mean, we were the perfect age

for this type of music. But people who grew up in the 80s unless you were into the early, early emo scenes, what do you? What do you? What do they think of this kind of music? You know what I mean? I've always wondered about that too.

I mean, there was music that was considered angsty and whatnot back in the 60s and 70s, right? I mean, they had to be it just maybe didn't sound like this. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I wonder if that's how older generations thought about shoegaze and dream pop when it first came out, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, if you think about it, like. Or new wave.

I can't stand a lot of new music now. I'm not going to listen to, I'm not going to grab T. Swift's nearest record. Or, and that's the thing, T. Swift gets a lot of respect. You know, I respect her as a musician. Sure. And as a marketer and all that stuff. Yeah. But, you know, a lot of times with the lyrics and stuff, I can't relate to it. And, you know, if you were, if you've never heard this record before, the record we're

talking about, you probably can't relate to it either, you know. Well, I was just reminded of this. I will never forget, around this time, we were playing a lot of music, a lot of these albums in our dad's car. Like, he would let us take over the CD player in the car when we were driving places. Yeah. And I remember, it didn't matter who it was, if it was the White Stripes or Hot Rod Circuit or Gmate World, every time Hartad would chime in and be like, is this, is this a new Blinquin 82 record? For some reason to him, right, everything

sounded like Blinquent 82. And I think he was referring to the power chords or like the simple, super simple song melodies. Right. But he would always say that. And I'm like, what are you talking about? This sounds nothing like Blinquin 82. It's like, you know, how can you not see the difference, dad? Yeah, exactly. But he would also, it would be.

be interchangeable. It would be, is this new Blinquent A 2 record? Or it would be, is this Metallica? If it had a slight, any sort of distortion, then it would be, is this Metallica? Dude, I hope Dad listens to this episode and chimes in. Dude, if he's scrolling through our records, he's going to swipe right past

Hot Rod Circuit, dude. He's been like, Hot Rod Who? You said if he's scrolling through our records, you meant to say episodes. You know what? Records, episodes. same thing. I guess I meant the records that we're talking about. That must have been what I meant.

If he's scrolling through iTunes, he's not going to, Hot Rod Circuit's not going to jump out of him as something that, oh, I got to listen to this one. That's true. But if he does, hopefully he gets a laugh out of that one. Well, all said with love. Yeah, of course, sure.

But I always thought that was funny, man. Yeah, right. And that's just probably just, you know, dad joke. He's just fucking with us. Right. I mean, I would do the same thing. The funny thing is, Q, if I had a kid who was, you know, a preteen or something like that, listening to insert today's random pop artist here, it would sound, it would all sound the same to me, too. In fact, that's what I say about, you know, pop music these days is it does sound the same.

Now, is that just me being old? Probably. Because it's all written by the same 15 people. Yes. You know? Yes. Right. Anyway.

So, yeah, I think that's what always stood out to me about this record. And where I like to go back to it is kind of what this person was saying in this review. It really does have a high level of like musicianship and songwriting that made them stand out, you know, above the crowd of all the other bands that were putting out music like this back in the day. You know, the guitar playing is great. The harmonies are great. And the way that they structure their songs are really interesting and different, you know. but maybe that's because I didn't listen to enough of this type of music and it turns out they sound like everybody else. I don't know.

I didn't listen to. I wasn't a full-blown emo head. I would kind of, you know, admire it from the sidelines and stuff. Yeah. So if you were a full-blown emo head in the early 2000s or if you were a little bit older, reach out to us on Twitter. Let us know what you think about this band. you know, or let us know what you think about punk emo kind of stuff.

I'm curious to know what people think of this stuff because like you were saying, we were 15, 16 years old, the perfect age at the time for this kind of music. So yeah, I'm curious to know what other people think of it. Yeah, and tell us who else we should talk about because we're going to stay in this vein for quite a bit here. So yeah. Yeah, although we've got our plan. We got our roadmap here on the tour bus. the school tour bus queue. We know all the stops.

I'm excited for the next full length, dude. Oh, yeah. All right. Let's wrap it up, dude. It's what you heard time. All right, man. I got a doozy. And this is as fresh as it gets.

I'm going to let you go first, brother. Yeah, because I'm already, I'm, I'm insisting on going first. Because I'm about to knock your socks off with this one. I'm ready. So the funny thing is I had another song. picked out for at least a week of like all right this is it this one I'm going to bring to the table for what you heard and then I heard this song maybe three hours ago and I was like holy shit and this is a newer track too so you're hyping it up brother oh man I don't want to

I don't want to describe it at all I just want to play it and let you react to it okay but I've never heard of this this group they are called tops and like I said I literally heard this song maybe three hours ago so I haven't really heard this song maybe three hours ago so I haven't really looked into them too much, but they are from Montreal. It is a songwriting duo of Mr. David Carriar. That's probably French, I probably screwed that up. And Jane Penny, and she seems to be the singer. But I would say, actually, no, I'm not going to say anything, because I want to see if you agree with me. All right, so this record came out last month April 3rd, so it's pretty fresh.

The record is called I Feel Alive, and I'm going to play the first track called Direct Sunlight. So here we go. This is Direct Sunlight by Tops. Hard not to like it, right? Yeah, it's like great, like disco pop kind of sound. Reminds me a lot of Alpine. Did you ever get into them?

The name rings a bell for sure. I love that kind of stuff. Yeah, I did. And the whole record is like that. That fucking flute solo or whatever I was. Really cool. I'll tell you who I was reminded of and definitely throughout the record. They had some Fleetwood Mac vibes to him a little bit.

Yeah. Some of the more kind of poppy Fleetwood Mac stuff. And I don't know this is just me, but I was feeling some Doobie brothers. Okay. Just like, it made me think of what a full leaves. Yeah, yeah. Dude, that's one of my favorite songs of all time. Yeah, me too.

There I said it. I fucking love that song, man. Holy shit. The melody, that hook. Anyway, yeah, Q. So I guess I want to save my track that I did have in mind for next week because it's a good one. But this was really fresh in my mind here, so I wanted to play it. But anyway, really good record. It's one of those records you can just say play on and let it go. It's called I Feel Alive. and again the band is called Tops. All right, Q, what you got for us today. All right, man, so I'm taking us back to 1971. A few nights ago, I dedicated an evening to Sir Paul McCartney.

I listened to a few Wings records, and I kind of moved over to his solo stuff, stuff they did it with Linda. So would you say that you were encouraged to do this after our episode on the unplugged. Yes. McCartney shot. Because I remember thinking, why the hell

haven't I given one of the Beatles? The best singer-songwriters of all time. Yeah, a proper listen. An excellent question. Yeah. So, this is an album called Ram. And I'm going to play a song that just right when I heard it, I was thinking like, holy shit, Paul McCartney did it first.

Because you'll probably reckon, You will immediately think of the same band. Okay. Dude, it's such a great song. So this song is called Monkberry Moon Delight. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. Yeah, if you had played that song and didn't tell me who it was, I would immediately think, oh, it's Manman. Yeah, dude.

So now we know where he got that sound from, because there's no way that he didn't listen to that record. That's what I'm saying, man. particular and say, all right, I can make a whole band out of this. And yeah, if you're not familiar with a band called Manman, I'd say usually one of the most memorable bands that I've ever come across. And they've got that sound. I don't know how else to describe it other than to say it just, I've always described it as like, if you were on a pirate ship and you went down underneath,

you know, to grab a pint or something, there could be a little house band on the pirate ship. playing a tune like this. It sounds like a pirate band. A little shanty tune. Yeah. Yeah. It's very possible that we could do an episode on rabbit habits.

One of their records came out, 2008. You should do that sometimes. But yeah, it's one of those, like you said, it's, you've never heard anything like it until you listen to McCartney, right? Because like, you and I who have never heard that, like you said, but yeah, McCartney did it first. And that's probably, you know, the answer is probably yes a lot of times. Right. Right. Or if the question is, did McCartney do it first or did the Beatles do it first, the answer

is probably always going to be yes, right? Yeah, you're right. And dude, Man Man Man needs to cover the song if they haven't already. Fuck, yeah, they do. That's what I'm thinking too. Kill it. Yes. And it even, that's even the name is exactly what, how Man Man names their songs.

Yeah. Monkberry Moon Delight. Right. I mean, come on, man. If you look at the track listening. on rabbit habits. You've got hurly burly, the ballad of butter beans.

Yeah. Especially if you go to their records before that, like six demon bag. I love that album, you got songs like Black Mission goggles, banana ghost. Anyway. Yeah, maybe we could do that record, dude.

That one's got some greatness on it. We should do an episode devoted to that live performance that they did from Alibaba. Yeah. Because that was amazing. You know, the funny thing, I think that's when we decided without any doubt that we were fans of music more so than anything when we were at the show. So we saw them live at this tiny venue and we were pumped because of the kind of show that we knew that they put on.

And we were front row. We were stoked as hell. And then somebody started a mosh pit and you and I got pissed. Because we were there to see them perform and not fuck around with a bunch of morons who were there to mosh. And so we bounced actually. Yeah, it was a shitty time, dude. Yes. It's like, dude, I'm here to see the fucking drummer.

Who's an amazing drummer. I saw them open for Modest Mouse in Austin. Oh, damn. Yeah. And it was amazing show. That must have been a great show. Yeah, so again, that was Paul and Linda McCartney, a song called Monk Berry Moon Delight off. of their album from 1971

RAM. All right, dude, that's going to do it for us today. Next week we're going to cover another band that... Same record label. Same record label as Hot Rod Sergit, a band that we also

listen to. And I know for sure that I picked up this album at CD Addict. I remember buying it there. No one cares. It's a band called Hey Mercedes. So until then, Thank you as always for listening.

You can find us on the Pantheon Podcast Network. It is a podcast network dedicated to all things music. A lot of great shows within the network. It's Pantheonpodcast.com. We also have our own website, no fillerpodcast.com. There you can find all of our episodes. You can also click through show notes and follow links to any of the articles that we used in the episode.

And we've also got track listing and, you know, other fun things like that on there. You can also reach out to us on Twitter. We are at No Filler, right? Isn't that what it is? At No Filler podcast. No. Give us a shout. We are pretty good at responding.

So, yeah, if you want to interact with us, you can do that on Twitter. And, yeah, we will be shouting out you. Yeah. I guess we'll just fade out with another Hot Rod Circuit song. I'm not sure which one. Do you have one in mind you want to fade out with? Yes, and I have no idea of this going to sound good or not, because I've never heard it. But in that article that I referenced a few times on Hybrid Magazine, they compare

Jackson, Andrew Jackson, Andy Jackson, and Andrew Jackson. That's the president. That's the singer of Hot Rod Circuit, which I don't think I even mentioned his name. But they compared his vocals in the Radiation Suit track to somebody named Jake Burns. And I said, who's this? I looked it up. It's a punk rock singer from the 70s. So we're going to listen to a record from 1979, a band called Stiff Little Fingers.

And I'm just going to, let's just play the first track, the number one track on Spotify, to close us out here. Because this apparently, according to this article here, it sounds like, on Rod. So this could be an early influence of his. This song is called Alternative Ulster. That'll do it for us this week. My name is Travis. And my name is Quentin. Yeah, I'll take care now.